Haiti

Haiti: population and cities

Population

Population

According to Countryaah website, Haiti has approximately 11 million residents, with an additional 4 million living abroad.

Ethnic composition

About 90% black, about 5% mulatto and 5% white live in Haiti.

Religious affiliation

About 80% Catholics, 15% Protestants and 5% other religious communities live in Haiti. The voudou cult is widespread (over 90%), to which many Haitians profess in addition to their official religion.

Voodoo religion

When you think of Haiti, you immediately think of the voodoo cult, which has always remained a bit puzzling and scary to people in the West. What seems so scary to an observer from the West are the ritual animal sacrifices and the consumption of intoxicating substances such as alcohol and tobacco. One still thinks of dolls pierced with needles, cock-swinging dancers and mindless, soulless undead. But if you want to get back to reality, you should approach the voodoo religion, to which 70% of Haitians belong, with a little more benevolence and interest. The voodoo cult has nothing to do with black magic, but rather with a form of dance and song ritual. Although the Roman Catholic faith is followed by a large number of Haitians, the more traditional religion of voodoo has been preserved, which incidentally has its roots in Africa has. When the slaves came to Haiti involuntarily, they brought their customs with them.

The focus of the Voodoo religion is Baka: This is a spirit from the realm of the dead, which must be appeased by the application of certain rituals, otherwise it feeds on human flesh.

Incidentally, the voodoo religion was only officially recognized in Haiti a few years ago.

National languages

The official language in Haiti is French. However, the vast majority of the population - over 95% - speaks Creole.

Capital and other cities

The capital of Haiti is Port-au-Prince, with a population of around 2.5 million.

Other larger cities are:

• Carrefour, with around 440,000 residents
• Delmas, with around 377,000 residents
• Cap-Haitien, with around 135,000 residents
• Pétionville, with around 108,000 residents
• Gonaives, with around 85,000 residents

Haiti: geography

Defined by DigoPaul, Haiti is the western part of the Hispaniola island in the Caribbean and borders the Dominican Republic.

Area and land use

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located on the island of Hispaniola. Haiti lies west of the Dominican Republic with the Atlantic in the north and the Caribbean in the south. The name of the country Haiti comes from the language of the indigenous people of Hispaniola and means mountainous country.

Haiti covers a total area of 27,750 km². Thereof:

• Forest

  Around 2% of the country is forested.

• Fields and fields

  Around 70% of the land is used as arable land or fields, especially for growing coffee, corn, rice, vegetables, sugar and cotton.

• Mountains

  There are four mountain ranges stretching over Haiti, these are:

  • Montagnes Noires in the north
  • Chaines des Matheux in the center
  • Massif de la Selle in the southeast

• Massif de la Hottein the southwest

Limits

Haiti shares a border with the Dominican Republic in the east with a length of 360 km.

Coastline

Haiti has a total coastline of around 1,771 km.

Tidal range

In Port-au-Prince, the mean tidal range is around 1.50 m. For detailed explanations of ebb and flow, see Tides, Ebb and Flow.

Compare

The world's highest tidal range can be found in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where it is up to 16 meters, and at spring tide even over 20 meters. The Bay of Fundy is located on the Atlantic between the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which is called Nova Scotia in German and whose capital is Halifax. On the German North Sea coast it varies between one and three meters. In the western Baltic Sea, on the other hand, the tidal range is only 0.3 meters, while it is barely noticeable in the eastern Baltic Sea.

Longitude and latitude

Haiti extends over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):

You can find detailed information on this subject under Longitude and Latitude.

Legal time

For Haiti, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time without summer time. A minus sign means that it is earlier there and a plus sign that it is later than after CET:

Further and detailed explanations of the time can be found under Time zones, time.

Highest point of the sun in Port-au-Prince

Port-au-Prince is located at a north latitude of around φ = 19 ° and thus in the middle of the tropics. If the declination δ of the sun has a value of 19 ° N, and thus the image point of the sun is exactly above the city or island, the sun is perpendicular there. This happens exactly twice a year, roughly 17 days before June 21st and then again 17 days after June 21st.

Attention

If the image point of the sun and thus the declination δ is north of the latitude of Port-au-Prince, the sun is not in the south at noon, as in our latitudes, but in the north. In this case, the sun moves from east to north to west, where, like us, it sets.

mountains

Pic de la Selle

The highest mountain in the country is the Pic de la Selle with a height of 2,680 m.

Pic Macaya,

Another high mountain is the Pic Macaya with a height of 2,347 m.

Rivers

Artibonite

The longest river in the country is the Artibonite with a length of around 170 km.

Lakes

Ëtang Saûmâtre

The largest lake is Ëtang Saûmâtre, with an area of around 170 km².

Islands

The following islands are in front of the country or belong to the state elsewhere:

• Île de la Gonâve
• Ile de la Tortue
• Grande Cayemite
• Ile à Vache

Caribbean and Atlantic

The Caribbean

Haiti borders the Atlantic in the north and the Caribbean in the south and west. The Caribbean is a marginal sea of the Atlantic and lies between the islands of the Caribbean and the American continent. In the west, Mexico and other Central American states border the Caribbean. In the south of Colombia and Venezuela. The border in the east and north form the following islands or archipelagos starting from Venezuela in a semi-circle to the "actual" Atlantic: Trinidad and Tabago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba. The deepest point in the Caribbean is the Cayman Rift between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with a depth of 7,680 m. Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean forms the "American Mediterranean".

The Atlantic

With an area of around 106 million km², the Atlantic Ocean (Atlantic) is the second largest ocean in the world after the Pacific. It separates America from Europe and Africa. At 9,220 m, it has its deepest point in the Milwaukee Deep - part of the Puerto Rico Trench. Its salt content is on average 3.54% (g/ l). Its water volume is approx. 355 million km³. Coming from the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream crosses the Atlantic to the coast of Norway and is largely responsible for the climate in Western and Northern Europe. The Atlantic includes numerous so-called marginal seas - e.g. the American Mediterranean. In addition, the Atlantic - especially in seafaring - is divided into the North Atlantic and South Atlantic. The Strait of Gibralta is certainly a very well-known connection between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, where it separates Europe (Gibralta/Great Britain) from Africa (Morocco). The Panama Canal connects the Pacific with the Atlantic for around 82 km. The Atlantic and Pacific meet at the legendary Cape Horn on the southern tip of the American continent.

Plate tectonics, earthquakes

In the north of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti, Dominican Republic) the North American plate and the Caribbean plate meet. The plates move towards each other in an east-west direction at a speed of 7 mm to 20 mm per year.

On the night of January 12-13, 2010, the country was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 - as well as around 15 aftershocks, half of which had a magnitude of 5.0. It was the worst earthquake since 1770.

The epicenter of the quake was about 16 km west of the capital Port-au-Prince and at a depth of only about 8 km. In the capital there is almost no building that has not been destroyed. In addition, large parts of the rest of the country are in ruins. 220,000 people probably lost their lives in the process. Around 3 million people were directly or indirectly affected by the quake, for example through injuries, the death of relatives or the loss of their property.